[Jay B]

So I just made the leap from XP to Vista. I did a clean install of course, anything else would be uncivilized. Vista looks a lot nicer, and is different in many ways, for better or for worse. So, how does it sound?

Well, its important to note that audio has been built from the ground up in Vista. All new driver implementations, and the way that the sound is mixed and passed to the kernel is new as well. It has been designed with high-quality audio in mind, so this is good news for us Head-Fiers. Microsoft worked with Intel to meet Intel's new High Definition Audio standard. I believe that any sound device supported by Vista must meet this standard. Either way, all the new cards, most notably the on-board cards, meet this standard. But I'd still recommend upgrading to a full sound card.

So I got vista up and running, and went straight to the music. But oh no, its popping and cracking and breaking up!! Not what I expected from a completely redone audio stack. Fortunately, after much searching, I found a fix, not the most intuitive fix though. I tried updating my sound card drivers. Nope. I read that the video drivers might be interfering with the sound drivers , so I updated my video drivers to the latest. BAM! Super smooth audio!

Okay, so how does it sound!? Great! There's definately an improvement. A comparable improvement to when I added a DAC to my system. That's pretty darn good! The sound is sharper and more engaging. It's simply higher fidelity. If you're a computer audio user, and are looking to upgrade your system but your components are already 'maxed out', Vista is a worthy upgrade.

There's more. My sound card offers a variety of different bit resolution/bit rate combinations, and the driver's for Vista offered selection of any combination. 16 or 24 bit and 41, 48, or 96 kHz. I tried all the combinations and could tell a noticeable difference between them all. For relation, I fail an ABX test in foobar between 192 MP3 and FLAC, so there's a noticible difference. (I pass 128 MP3 vs FLAC) The 24-bit settings were smoother; the high's weren't as sharp, and was more engaging. Going up in bit rate didn't change the clarity or warmth of the sound, but made the music more engaging. In the end I went for the 16 bit/96kHz combination. I wanted the hard hitting trebles of 16-bit because I listen to Trance, which has a lot of hard hitting bass and treble, and enjoyed the engaging benefit from 96kHz.

This was all a nice surprise for me because I upgraded to Vista for other reasons, and was actually expecting the sound quality to be worse. Just makes me that much happier to be using Vista. There's certainly issues with Vista, but overall I think I like it from what I've seen so far (48 hrs). Service Pack 1 is due out shortly (in the next few months), so when that arrives would certainly be a great time to upgrade. Something to think about!

PS - If your a Mac or Linux user, you can kindly ignore this post

 

[Zorander]

Now to wait until M-Audio releases drivers for the Revolution series (pun intended)

 

[Hancoque]

I know that Vista has a vastly improved audio engine compared to XP and I'm glad that somebody finally notices it. But I have a hard time believing that 16 Bit or 44.1 KHz sounds noticeably different from 24 Bit or 96 KHz, assuming that the audio material initially comes from (or is on) a CD.

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jay B /img/forum/go_quote.gif It has been designed with high-quality audio in mind, so this is good news for us Head-Fiers. Microsoft worked with Intel to meet Intel's new High Definition Audio standard.

Nah, it all depends on where you are coming from when you switch to Vista. If you were already using a nice soundcard with ASIO w/ XP, don't expect any improvement when you move to Vista.

On the other hand, Vista brings a WHOLE lot of incompatibilities, quirks, and copy-protection B.S., and unless you absolutely need Vista for some great reason, I would not recommend a switch, at least for some time. I wish I could switch back my new computer that came with Vista..

 

[Jay B]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nah, it all depends on where you are coming from when you switch to Vista. If you were already using a nice soundcard with ASIO w/ XP, don't expect any improvement when you move to Vista. On the other hand, Vista brings a WHOLE lot of incompatibilities, quirks, and copy-protection B.S., and unless you absolutely need Vista for some great reason, I would not recommend a switch, at least for some time. I wish I could switch back my new computer that came with Vista..

It's worth noting that I wasn't using ASIO in my XP setup.

I think the switch to Vista is inevitable and everyone will have to switch one day, so why not learn its quirks early on. But holding off for SP1 is a good idea. It isn't completely stable and has crashed on me a few times.

 

[Jay B]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hancoque /img/forum/go_quote.gif I know that Vista has a vastly improved audio engine compared to XP and I'm glad that somebody finally notices it. But I have a hard time believing that 16 Bit or 44.1 KHz sounds noticeably different from 24 Bit or 96 KHz, assuming that the audio material initially comes from (or is on) a CD.

One thing to note is that I'm using the coax digital output of my sound card to feed my X-DAC. So the differences in the bit rate/resolution could be due to how the DAC handles the different input streams.

 

[Jigglybootch]

The idea that the video drivers were "interfering" with the audio is insane to me. Sounds like Microsoft really designed a winner.

 

[maarek99]

"Designed with high-quality audio"... That's marketing speak that basically means "a lot of unnecessary filters in the audio path, like a build in tone-control woo!". Just look at all the stupid options in the sound configurations, it's a lot harder to get bitperfect in Vista than XP.

I mean, what are the CONCRETE examples of Vista audio being better?

 

[Hancoque]

Bit-perfect is a purely theoretical thing.

Vista provides some effects for certain sound cards like bass management or room correction, but all these effects (if available) can be switched off. So the only thing that's done to your music is the resampling process (if the sample format of the music differs from the one set in Vista) and a volume control. Good resampling algorithms cannot be ABXed (ask at the Hydrogenaudio forums) and multiplying a 32 bit float value by a certain factor also doesn't introduce any degradations (it's the common format for all internal calculations in professional audio software).

That you set a fixed sample rate in Vista is an advantage to XP because there are many sound cards that let you use arbitrary sample rates but in fact all these sample rates but one (48 kHz) are internally resampled by the sound card (to 48 kHz) and that most often in a very poor manner. Some sound cards even have only one supported sample rate, so regardless what sample rate your material has, without resampling you wouldn't be able to play it.

 

[zyxwvutsr]

how well would those diy dacs work with windows vista?

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zyxwvutsr /img/forum/go_quote.gif how well would those diy dacs work with windows vista?

Good question. Probably about as well as anything else works with Vista. It's basically plug and pray.

 

[maarek99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hancoque /img/forum/go_quote.gif Vista provides some effects for certain sound cards like bass management or room correction, but all these effects (if available) can be switched off. So the only thing that's done to your music is the resampling process (if the sample format of the music differs from the one set in Vista) and a volume control.

So let me get this straight. Vista has nothing new except a fancyer resampling algorithm and now it's audio stack is much better? It has removed the hardware abstraction layer so I can't even get proper EAX in directsound games, but it offers nothing else in return. Tone controls? Bah.

Then the practical part. What if my X-fi is in game mode (very good resampling to 48khz with the x-fi dsp) but Vista is in 44khz 24-bit mode. What the hell is it doing to the sound and why doesn't it work in 48khz mode then? Is there somekindoff double resampling going on? 44->48->44. How can I turn off EVERY Vista sound enhancement? Including that full range front speakers setting. Why do those enhancement work for asio applications too?

 

[Hancoque]

Read this if you really want to know what the changes are.

And why would you want to set Vista to 44.1 kHz if your sound card has a native sample rate of 48 kHz? To bypass Vista's resampler (for CD material) and use the sound card's internal one instead? Because you think it's better or just don't trust Vista? Well, if you really want the maximum control over resampling you should use a proper resampling plugin in your player software, set it to 48 kHz, set Vista to 48 kHz and therefore bypass both Vista's and the sound card's resamplers.

 

[thomaspf]

Bit-perfect is a purely theoretical thing.

what do you mean by that? It is not theoretical for me anywhere expect for my Vista machines of course. I wager that very few people on this forum use sound cards that don't support native 44.1Khz. All HD audio chips seems to natively support 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 192.

The fixed frequency is a real pain in the ...

Most of my music is in my CD library in 16/44.1 so that is my default. When I watch a movie and forget to switch to 48Khz that is now resampling.

I have about 50 albums in 24/96 quality and nw I always have to manually switch to 24/96 if I want to hear that natively. With Linn releasing their music in lossless WMA 48 and 88.2 there is even more manual switching required.

A logical way to do this would have been to switch the rate along with the stream being played and resort to some resampling frequency if the card being used does not support a requested rate.


Cheers

Thomas

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hancoque /img/forum/go_quote.gif Bit-perfect is a purely theoretical thing.